David Skelton: Let's offer trade union members free Conservative Party membership

David Skelton is the Director of Renewal, a campaign organisation aiming to broaden the appeal of the Conservative Party. Follow David on Twitter.

There are almost seven million trade union members in the UK. In many of the marginal seats that Conservatives have to win to gain an overall majority in 2015, trade union members could hold the balance of power. The Party is right to disagree with the ideologically driven wreckers who lead the major unions, but that shouldn’t stop them reaching out to ordinary trade union members, many of whom are sympathetic to conservatism.

Trade unions are, after all, fairly conservative institutions. They’re voluntary institutions, which aren’t part of the big state, and they’re based on conservative ideas like mutual assistance and community. There’s also a lot of evidence that many trade unionists are very receptive to conservative ideas. Recent polling by Lord Ashcroft showed that Unite members overwhelmingly back policies like the benefit cap and right to buy, both of which are opposed by their union’s leadership. Only 12 per cent of Unite members say that they would join the Labour Party if they were no longer made affiliate members.

Conservatives are right to take on trade union leaders, like Len McCluskey, who are getting in the way of much needed reforms. But they should be careful not to make it appear that they’re hostile to trade unions and trade unionists in general. As Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests, firebrand union leaders are almost entirely unrepresentative of their members.

Tory politicians should appeal to union members over the heads of the out of touch union leaders gathering at the TUC Congress this week. And they should learn from Margaret Thatcher when they’re trying to appeal to trade unionists. In 1950, Mrs Thatcher was elected President of the Dartford branch of Conservative Trade Unionists and, after being elected as party leader in 1975, she vastly expanded the organisation, to the extent that Conservative Trade Unionists had around 250 branches and held a major rally at Wembley before the 1979 election.

David Skelton: Why I'm moving on - to help meet the Conservatives' northern challenge

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I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done over the past few years at Policy Exchange. We’ve really helped to set the political and the policy agenda across the board over the past few years – showing that think tanks can, and do, make a positive difference to public policy.

One of the most interesting pieces of work that we published during my time here was our paper called ‘Northern Lights’, which set out the challenges facing all political parties. The challenge for the Conservatives was set out clearly in one statistic from the report – some 64 per cent of voters believe that “the Conservative Party looks after the interests of the rich, not ordinary people.”  Only 27 per cent of voters disagreed with that statement.

David Skelton: More needs to be done to help white, working class boys fulfil their potential

David Skelton is the acting Director of Policy Exchange. Follow him on Twitter.

Universities Secretary David Willetts has caused controversy by suggesting that white working class boys should be considered in the same way as ethnic minorities in university admissions.  This provoked howls of anguish from those who suggest that such an idea stifles meritocracy. But Willetts has a point. Not enough working class boys are going to university. It's also the case that working class boys are more likely to struggle at GCSE level and more likely to become disengaged from education. Ensuring that the accident of birth doesn't determine life chances us the major reason that education reform is so important. 

The statistics certainly suggest that Willetts is right. Research for the Sutton Trust found that private school students are 55 times more likely than pupils on free school meals to win a place at Oxbridge and 22 times more likely to win a place at one of the thirty most selective institutions.  They also estimate that 3,000 state school pupils have the necessary grades but do not get a place at these top thirty universities.  15 per cent of schools and colleges offering A’ Levels last year did not send a single pupil to a Russell Group University and 64 per cent did not send one to Oxbridge.

David Skelton: How to win in the North. Action on fuel duty, planning, job creation - and an industrial strategy

David Skelton is the Deputy Director of Policy Exchange. Follow him on Twitter.

Last Thursday, the Conservatives lost their deposit in Manchester Central – they came in a distant third and only five votes ahead of UKIP. It illustrates the depth of the ‘Northern crisis’ that has bedevilled the Conservatives since the 1980s. The Tories have a Northern problem, and if they don’t fix their Northern problem it’s unlikely that they will be able to govern with a sustainable overall majority.

The latest YouGov poll gives Labour a 34 per cent lead in the North, compared to 11 per cent nationally.  A massive 64 per cent of people in the North say that they disapprove of the Government’s record to date, with only 18 per cent in the North saying that the Government is “good for people like you.”. 

Northern, working class Toryism - once a real and thriving political force - has now become an endangered species. Disraeli’s ‘angels in marble’ have been replaced with a culture of anti-Toryism in many cities in the North. If Conservatives don’t address that fact, their long term political ambitions will be thwarted.

David Skelton: Equal marriage would be good for gay people, good for the institution of marriage and good for society

David Skelton is the Deputy Director of Policy Exchange. Follow him on Twitter.

David Cameron’s support for gay marriage has provoked the opposition of a number of Tory MPs, with opponents lambasting the proposals as “metropolitan”, “out of touch” or “unconservative”. 

It’s pretty clear that the first two monikers aren’t true – polls show that gay marriage is supported by around two thirds of people, and those same polls show that the biggest level of support is in blue collar areas like the North East, Yorkshire and the West Midlands.

Suggestions that gay marriage is "unconservative" are deeply mistaken. Marriage is a profoundly conservative institution – it helps to bind families, communities and society together. Marriage encourages commitment and fidelity. People who are married are likely to be healthier and are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviour. If you believe that marriage is a powerful and socially beneficial institution, as conservatives rightly do, and if you believe that homosexuality is natural, then it is only logical to believe that those benefits should be extended to gay people.

If conservatives believe in the unique institution of marriage then they should agree that it is absolutely not good enough for gay people to have to accept a ‘half way house’ institution like civil partnerships. This is especially true because many of the benefits of marriage could be of particular benefit to the gay community. Equal marriage could play an important role in tackling the mental health problems and issues with high risk behaviour that continue to affect the gay community. Traditional conservative thinking would suggest that allowing gay people to marry would help to address both of these issues.

David Skelton: Elected mayors could make the North less reliant on Whitehall and Westminster for jobs and growth

David Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange. Follow him on Twitter.

A fellow North Easterner living in London alerted me to The Times’ interactive map of the town and cities deciding whether to have an elected Mayor today. Here it is:

It presents a slightly unconventional (i.e. geographically ignorant) view of the North. Newcastle, for example is portrayed as being just South East of Doncaster, when it’s actually over 100 miles to the North. Everywhere else is bunched up like a terrace of back-to-back houses. It’s almost as though a Southern hack has thrown a random series of numbers at an amorphous ‘North’ on a map. They may as well have scrawled “Here Be Dragons” across the Pennines and left it at that.

Dave Skelton: In many working class communities, football is all that is left. It’s time for radical reform to restore optimism to deprived areas.

Dave Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange and a "passionate North Easterner". Follow him on Twitter.

It’s the North East derby this weekend.  Like every Sunderland fan, I know that those 90 minutes are going to be nerve-wracking.  In a region like the North East, where football is under the skin, the result matters a hell of a lot.  Bragging rights for the next few months will be decided in schools, workplaces and even divided family homes.

Growing up in Consett, a working class town where there are plenty of Sunderland and Newcastle fans, you certainly knew about it if the result had gone the wrong way.

The rivalry between the sides has become, to many supporters, visceral, vicious and all consuming.  There are plenty of fans on both sides of the divide who would now rather win the derby than win the league – I know because they’ve told me.

24 fans were arrested after the derby last year and the police presence and atmosphere of tension is always massive. The chants about opposition players and supporters are, all too regularly descend into the outright offensive.

It isn’t just the North Eastern derby that has taken on a new level of tension in the past couple of decades.  The same has happened in London.  Last week Spurs and Arsenal had to issue a pre-match statement calling on fans to respect rival fans and players.  Local rivalries have now taken on the type of bitterness once reserved for those matches, such as those in Glasgow, where religion, politics and football made for an often toxic combination.

David Skelton: Cameron needs a plan to appeal to the North

David Skelton is Deputy Director and Head of Research at Policy Exchange.  He was born and brought up in Consett, County Durham.

Gaining permission to be listened to

 A key element of Conservative modernisation was that the party should put themselves in a position where the party gained permission, from the voters, to be listened to.  Many in the North are still not listening to the Conservatives.  And the Tories must take steps to change that.

A start would be for Conservatives to acknowledge the historical reasons that have created a cultural anti-Toryism in parts of the North, where many still associate Conservatives with deindustrialisation, unemployment and the social problems that followed in their wake.

Dealing with this might include a vocal realisation from Conservative politicians that, whilst economic changes were necessary, social consequences of those changes damaged communities and social cohesion.  Whilst Conservatives have issued a mea culpa around policies towards gay people and other groups, gaining them greater credibility within those communities, they have still to address discontent in the North. 

Such a move can only go so far.  Addressing past issues is important, but far less important than proposing solutions for social and economic problems facing the North.